Introduction
This is the second article in a 4-part series on framework vs. the K. You can read part one here.
Armed with a clear understanding of the composition of a framework – the role of the judge and its consequences – I turn to popular frameworks deployed in debates today and illustrate what I take to be common strategic mistakes.
To start, we should look at what makes any given framework desirable?
From a strategic standpoint, this should be whatever maximizes your offense and minimizes your opponents’ offense. Following Scott Phillips, the goal should be to move the line for your win condition as close to your side as possible.
Pedagogically, this query is more nuanced. Following the most common standards laid out in topicality debates, I’ll be dividing justifications into those based on procedural fairness, education, and clash. To briefly summarize why these should be valued (risking rehashing a million framework debates):
Fairness is important for ensuring the competitive aspect of debate. It is this aspect that differentiates it from other research activities, providing both a motivation for work and approach to argument development.
Education is important to shape debaters not just as students, but as citizens. Knowledge on the processes of the world and how to be an ethical subject are both important for doing good in the world.
Clash is important to combat bias and develop advocacy skills. Instilling a mindset that both sides of an issue should be considered and researched helps students consider the nuance of various issues and encourages them to critically examine their own pre-existing assumptions. To be able to successfully advocate for a given proposal (policy-focused or not) requires a thorough understanding of arguments on both sides of an issue, something debate promotes.
Plan Focus – Overview
The first framework I’ll examine is plan focus. This framework understands the judge to be a logical policymaker deliberating over the consequences of a specific policy (the plan). As such, the ballot signifies their endorsement (or lack thereof) of that plan. Notably, they endorse the mandate of the plan and not the 1AC as a whole, just as a policymaker signs a bill without necessarily endorsing any specific instance of rhetoric backing it. This distinction provides the basis for extensions of plan focus such as judge choice, a topic I’ll examine in the next part of this series.
This is the default framework for evaluating policy v. policy debates. Significant theoretical arguments in policy debates stem from the judge as a policymaker, such as counterplan competition and negative fiat, disputes over the status of various negative advocacies, and intrinsicness in the context of disadvantages.
What does this mean in practice for negative kritiks, at least as we understand them in modern debates?
First, links. If the negative can only get offense from the mandate of the plan, then they only get links to the specific action of the affirmative. That means they have to be both unique and specific to the plan action, with some sort of discernable impact. There’s another name for these kinds of links; namely, disadvantages. The aff’s assumptions are only relevant insofar as indicting them implicates the results of the plan itself.
Second, alternatives.In terms of competition, it centers on resolutional action. As such, in the vein of David Glass’s “counter-topicality”, the negative is barred from competing based on links to the 1AC as a broader speech act are right out. In terms of the limits of fiat, theoretical debates in the late 80s and early 90s decided that alternatives like the “world peace” or “anarchism” counterplans were no-gos under plan focus, arguing that that such “utopian” approaches were incommensurable vis a vis resolutional action. Most modern alts also don’t present true opportunity costs to the judge as a policymaker, who could not possible consider an epistemological reorientation as a logical alternative to passing a bill. The most viable alts under this model would be state-based, such as a move to nationalize all businesses on antitrust or enact a nationwide policy of degrowth. At this point though, it’s clear that these are just uniqueness counterplans for what would be links to the plan; the cap K becomes the cap DA.
The vastly diminished state of the kritik under this framework clearly establishes its strategic utility. In terms of its other justifications though, what does plan focus have going for it?
Plan Focus – Fairness
Many arguments surrounding procedural fairness fail because rather than articulate offensive reasons as to why the plan focus is good, they use an assumption of the framework to justify itself.
The first of these assumptions is that the role of the judge is that of a logical policymaker. This is apparent in appeals to logic, arguing that links based on assumptions or framing are not true opportunity costs to a congressperson. If the judge adopts a different role such as an educator considering more than just the resolution, however, it suddenly becomes illogical to disregard these links.
The second of these assumptions it that the resolution should be the starting point for offense. This is clearest in claims that it becomes impossible to affirm without being able to weigh the consequences of your plan. If there are other sources of offense outside just the resolution under alternative frameworks, it seems significantly more plausible for the affirmative to win sans fiat.
One standard that evades these pitfalls is aff ground, arguing that the resolution is the only reciprocal source of ground given the nature of literature bases. There are more likely to be high-quality solvency advocates for policy action than defenses against niche critical frameworks.
Plan Focus – Education
The closest thing to an education standard would be relating to the centrality of policymaking that plan focus privileges. By focusing debates to be about the desirability of government action, research is centered on specific policy proposals. Given the surplus of alternative activities like mock trial or even something like congress that offer more direct simulations of these government processes, this is a fairly weak standard.
Plan Focus – Clash
Plan focus has a few inroads to a clash standard.
First, the framework is reasonably predictable. The resolutional question is presented on each topic, with the “should” indicating a normative question that debaters should hash out and the judge adjudicate the truth of.
Second, the locus of clash that plan focus produces is stable. No matter what ends up happening in any given round, the central question of the debate will be whether or not the plan is a good idea. This allows teams to better structure their argumentation, focusing impact calculus and tailoring their arguments to what they know will matter; this also means they don’t waste time on irrelevant issues. Evaluating offense is extremely straightforward, given that debates are always fundamentally CP/DA.
Third, the literature is (usually) reciprocal which is conducive to nuanced engagement. Any specific policy proposal, assuming that the topic committee has done a reasonable job, should have good evidence both for and against it. When alternative frameworks shift the focus of debate to a different issue/subject, that may be no longer the case–when there is overwhelming evidence for one side, there isn’t much clash.
Plan Focus – Misc.
To go on a bit of a tangent, an underexplored standard is truth-testing. In a world where morality presumably matters, it seems like testing the normative value of the resolutional question is important to inculcate a discerning ethical mindset. Maybe this is more of an education standard; regardless, food for thought.
Plan Focus – Pet Peeves
From a strategic standpoint, there are a few pet peeves I have with some deployments of plan focus in the current debate landscape.
Going back to the strategic purpose of framework, plan focus maximizes your offense by letting you weigh the plan and minimizes negative offense by mooting various links. Many teams, in an attempt to fulfill these goals, do so in a way that ends up undermining themselves. To illustrate this, I examine some interpretations seen in recent high-level college and high school debates.
The first of these missteps is when teams trade theoretical rigor for clarity in judge instruction:
“weigh the aff against links to the plan’s fiated implications.”
“evaluate plan not arbitrary criteria”
“The ballot is a referendum on the hypothetical consequences of the plan. Any links must be to the implementation of the plan”
In practice, these three are functionally the same interpretation. To understand this, look at how the judge would go about evaluating offense under each. In every case, they would weigh the hypothetical consequences of the plan vs. unique links to just that action.
Just because they function the same does not mean their quality is identical, however. Only the third provides a theoretical grounding that the first two lack, outlining a logical role for the judge and their ballot. Without this, the others come across more as desperate pleas for the judge to do something more than a robust argument. That weakness makes it difficult to win.
Another common pitfall is that in a pursuit to prioritize weighing the plan, teams sacrifice framework’s defensive value against links. Many interpretations attempt to make concessions to make them more justifiable, appealing to a sense of reasonability:
“Weigh the desirability of the plan against a competitive alternative”
“weigh the implementation of the plan. Any alternative must defend uniqueness and material solvency.”
The logic operating in these examples is that since community norms generally agree that the neg gets an alternative, your interpretation should include them. As a result, however, these interpretations become theoretically incoherent. What is the basis of competition for these alternatives? Why must they be unique and material? Is the negative spotted links to non-resolutional action that the alt resolves? Are there restrictions on its agent? Clearly, a logical interpretation that is justified in excluding alternatives is strategically preferable to one that irrationally includes them.
Plan Focus – Conclusions
What to take away from this breakdown of arguments for plan focus and its modern iterations?
First, you should probably rewrite your blocks. Replace tautological appeals to fairness in a vacuum with nuanced aff ground standards, make your 2ACs slightly longer, and most important make it explicit in your interpretation that you are defending plan focus. While now the other team might have more of an indication to open up the “plan focus 2NC long” portion of their FW blocks, the judge is going to be on the same page as you.
Second, have a firm theoretical grounding. The judge shouldn’t just be told what to do (weigh the plan), but why they are doing it (they are a policymaker).
Third, don’t be afraid to double down. The best justifications for plan focus, namely clash, are based off an extremely limited stasis point. Trying to make concessions to critical frameworks paradoxically ends undermining the coherency of your framework, making it less likely to win out in any given debate.
To summarize, let’s look at an interpretation that does it right:
“judge should evaluate the unique consequences of the plan – the aff is constrained by uniqueness, the negative needs to be as well. Indictments of assumptions should affect assessment of the probability of unique consequences – key to fairness and to prevent absolution.”
While a bit light on warrants, this has a firm theoretical basis for a plan focus framework. It sets up a 1AR defensive push through its framing of assumptions, while not spotting links to discourse insofar as negative offense is still constrained to resolutional action.